Database performance is critical to many organizations. Slow database response time can reduce worker productivity and slow operation of software systems that access and manipulate data in databases.
Database administrators monitor database performance and modify and update database configurations to improve performance. This may include updating indexes and database statistics used by query optimization processes. Database administrators may also defragment data stored on storage devices to provide continuous blocks of data to reduce disk seek time. These efforts may improve database performance, but database latency still exists.
To further improve database performance, database administrators have manually moved data estimated to be used most frequently to faster storage devices. However, the frequency at which data is accessed changes over time. Thus, performance gains from such efforts are commonly short lived and must be manually repeated to maintain the improved performance.